Every month we feature our favorite web tools and apps for English language learners and teachers. This month we are highlighting Owl Eyes, a free personalized annotation platform for readers to make their own highlights and notes. The platform provides language learners with various tools to digitally highlight what they read so they enhance their critical reading skills.
This is a list of Owl Eyes’ incredible features that enhance literacy and promote active reading:
- Read any book from a selection of a thousand free public domain texts
- Gain a better understanding of the text through Owl Eyes annotations
- Young Adult and Short Fiction shelves are more accessible for English language learners
- Owl Eyes guides (A Guide to Greek and Roman Gods, A Guide to Shakespeare’s Sonnets) help readers understand allusions and references
- Lesson plans, activities, and worksheets available to teachers to make teaching easier
- Classrooms promote deeper reading through discussion and collaboration
- Annotations with reply functionality to encourage questioning and discussion
- Analysis pages provide the context to make reading and literacy more accessible
- Teachers can make quizzes within the text to aid students in asking questions while they read
- Reading level and approximate reading time listed alongside the text to help teachers assign appropriately-leveled text to students
Each week we scour the internet to find great web tools and apps to share on our various social networks (@TESOL, @AmericanTESOL, and @ESLWebinars). Check out our past favorites here.
To learn more about integrating technology to support English language learners, attend our TESOL webinars.
